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By the way, three miles island did not have a meltdown.
Not only did it not have a meltdown, the nuclear safety industry considers it a success story. The safety measures detected an error and kicked in appropriately.
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Right. Except when you replace too high a percentage of your grid with solar and wind you need storage or wasted overlap with something more stable because you need to provide for shifts in weather. Our increase in weather prediction capabilities have allowed areas to increase the amount they can safely convert to solar, but it still caps I believe around 30% for highly studied areas. Above that you need to run traditional generators in parellel and end up wasting the energy because of the delay it takes in bringing generators online can make you unable to respond to load changes.
Right. Except that this is mostly untrue.
Germany, for example, is averaging about 30% renewable energy (and up to 100% renewable at times) without massive storage or wasted parallel generation. Rather, what they have is dispatchable generation... because we can accurately predict wind and sunlight conditions more than an hour in advance they know when they aren't going to have enough power and can ramp up natural gas and other sources to compensate. This results in very little 'wasted power'.
Intermittent power sources can also be handled with a large smart grid to transfer energy from excess production areas to excess demand areas. So with that, storage (mostly pumped hydro currently), and dispatchable power there are three solid options for handling intermittency.
The 'baseload run in parallel' concept really only gets trotted out as a red herring. None of the areas moving heavily in to renewable power are actually designing their systems that way.
Right. Except when you replace too high a percentage of your grid with solar and wind you need storage or wasted overlap with something more stable because you need to provide for shifts in weather. Our increase in weather prediction capabilities have allowed areas to increase the amount they can safely convert to solar, but it still caps I believe around 30% for highly studied areas. Above that you need to run traditional generators in parellel and end up wasting the energy because of the delay it takes in bringing generators online can make you unable to respond to load changes.Right. Except that this is mostly untrue.
Germany, for example, is averaging about 30% renewable energy (and up to 100% renewable at times) without massive storage or wasted parallel generation. Rather, what they have is dispatchable generation... because we can accurately predict wind and sunlight conditions more than an hour in advance they know when they aren't going to have enough power and can ramp up natural gas and other sources to compensate. This results in very little 'wasted power'.
Intermittent power sources can also be handled with a large smart grid to transfer energy from excess production areas to excess demand areas. So with that, storage (mostly pumped hydro currently), and dispatchable power there are three solid options for handling intermittency.
The 'baseload run in parallel' concept really only gets trotted out as a red herring. None of the areas moving heavily in to renewable power are actually designing their systems that way.
Not sure where you are getting your information, but according to wikipedia Germany is currently operating at 11-12% renewable energy, but only 1/5th of that is wind or solar. Most is biomass.
By the way, three miles island did not have a meltdown.Not only did it not have a meltdown, the nuclear safety industry considers it a success story. The safety measures detected an error and kicked in appropriately.Half the fuel had melted... while it did not do a China syndrome, it did pool at the bottom of the containment vessel.
It's also worth noting that the cleanup from the accident ran from 1979-1993... 14 years and 1 billion dollars.
Nevertheless, the safety mechanisms for 40+year old tech worked and worked properly. We have decades of advancements on that technology. Nuclear power is safer and has a lower incident rate than traditional fossil fuel facilities.
Not sure where you are getting your information, but according to wikipedia Germany is currently operating at 11-12% renewable energy, but only 1/5th of that is wind or solar. Most is biomass.
Don't look at energy consumption. That includes transportation, where renewables are obviously barely represented, and heating (for which all that biomass is burned).
CBD probably meant net generated electricity, where the percentage is about 25% renewables.
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Not sure where you are getting your information, but according to wikipedia Germany is currently operating at 11-12% renewable energy, but only 1/5th of that is wind or solar. Most is biomass.
Don't look at energy consumption. That includes transportation, where renewables are obviously barely represented, and heating (for which all that biomass is burned).
CBD probably meant net generated electricity, where the percentage is about 25% renewables.
That section is listed as electricity production and is explicitly talking about biomass power plants. So no, those numbers are not including heating or transportation.
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That section is listed as electricity production and is explicitly talking about biomass power plants. So no, those numbers are not including heating or transportation.Not sure where you are getting your information, but according to wikipedia Germany is currently operating at 11-12% renewable energy, but only 1/5th of that is wind or solar. Most is biomass.
Don't look at energy consumption. That includes transportation, where renewables are obviously barely represented, and heating (for which all that biomass is burned).
CBD probably meant net generated electricity, where the percentage is about 25% renewables.
Ummm... what?
First sentence of the "Renewable Energy" section of that page;
"The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to over 25 percent in the first half of 2012."
Fabius's guess that you are including non-electrical generation makes sense (i.e. 11% is about right and you only get 'biomass' as a dominant factor when you include wood burning fires), but I really don't know. In any case, even your source confirms my numbers. Which isn't news... the high renewable electricity penetration in Germany has been widely discussed and analyzed for several years now.
Again, parallel generation is a red herring. Yes, it would be exceedingly costly and inefficient... which is precisely why nobody is doing it. There are multiple better options available. Just as there are multiple better options than nuclear... which is why Germany has been able to replace its nuclear power with renewables so quickly.
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Just want to chime in - even if the globe is warming - it probably doesn't really matter very much.
I know virtually nothing about the science aspect, and I won't try to weigh in there. (I'm dubious that the scientists on either side know as much as they generally claim.) However - I am a student of history.
It's still nowhere near as warm as it was during The Medieval Warm Period - we know that based upon merchant records of what crops were grown where. For example: There are records of calls for the French gov. to put tariffs on English wine, which was apparently superior to the French wine of the time. (You can't grow decent grapes in England now... because it's too cold.)
The world didn't blow up. In fact - the world's population did quite well.
Again, parallel generation is a red herring. Yes, it would be exceedingly costly and inefficient... which is precisely why nobody is doing it. There are multiple better options available. Just as there are multiple better options than nuclear... which is why Germany has been able to replace its nuclear power with renewables so quickly.
No its not. My company, GE, is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling solutions to the problem to energy companies. Its literally the basis for their new software division. There is billions of dollars of profit to be made in the area by optimizing natural gas and coal plant runtime. It is in no way a red herring, but it is becoming a solved problem. In 3-5 years it wont be a significant issue, but right now energy companies are losing money to it and are actively trying to rectify it.
It's still nowhere near as warm as it was during The Medieval Warm Period - we know that based upon merchant records of what crops were grown where.
Ah, a student of history! Forget the Medieval Warm Period, though, and check out temperatures during the Eocene Epoch -- CO2 was at about twice current levels (and methane a lot higher), and mean ocean surface temperature in the tropics may have been about 95oF. Antarctica was covered in forests.
Where was the sea level?
Where was the sea level?
Higher than current, but even with no ice caps you don't get Waterworld or anything like that. Remember that liquid water volume is lower than its frozen volume.
Just as there are multiple better options than nuclear... which is why Germany has been able to replace its nuclear power with renewables so quickly.
Unfortunately, that is not quite true. There are still a few nuclear plants in operation. The slack of the nuclear plants going off the grid has been picked up not only by renewables, but also by coal and gas plants to a considerable degree. Brown coal is still pretty big here, because there are a lot of jobs depending it in East Germany.
Regarding parallel generation: current German law lets people with their own means of generating electricity from renewables feed their power into the main grid for monetary recompense. Said power has priority over energy generated the old-fashioned way.
The European grids are pretty well maintained (although an expansion is overdue), which means that excess power can transmitted quickly from one country to another to balance shortages happens regularly.
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It's still nowhere near as warm as it was during The Medieval Warm Period - we know that based upon merchant records of what crops were grown where.Ah, a student of history! Forget the Medieval Warm Period, though, and check out temperatures during the Eocene Epoch -- CO2 was at about twice current levels (and methane a lot higher), and mean ocean surface temperature in the tropics may have been about 95oF. Antarctica was covered in forests.
I figured that I'd stick to when humans were around. Plus - I'm iffy about all of the long-term geological proofs. After all - there's no way to prove them without waiting a few thousand years. A lot of it is just popular hypothesis.
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It's still nowhere near as warm as it was during The Medieval Warm PeriodNo. Parts of the planet were warmer during the 'MWP'. The planet as a whole was not. It isn't even close.
That's based upon Proxy records - which are horribly inaccurate - and are ball-park figures at best. I'll stick to historical documents when I want hard facts.
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Just as there are multiple better options than nuclear... which is why Germany has been able to replace its nuclear power with renewables so quickly.Unfortunately, that is not quite true. There are still a few nuclear plants in operation.
About half have been shut down and the remainder are all set to go offline by 2022.
The slack of the nuclear plants going off the grid has been picked up not only by renewables, but also by coal and gas plants to a considerable degree. Brown coal is still pretty big here, because there are a lot of jobs depending it in East Germany.
After the nuclear phaseout was announced in 2011 fossil fuel use grew slightly for a couple of years and has now dropped slightly for a couple of years... never more than a +/- 3% shift. Nuclear, on the other hand, has dropped from ~25% to ~13% while renewables have picked up all of that slack AND the ongoing increase in demand.
So yes, the rapid nuclear phaseout has meant much more fossil fuel use than would have been the case if Germany had kept nuclear while ramping up renewables... but fossil fuels are not really growing by any significant amount.
That section is listed as electricity production and is explicitly talking about biomass power plants. So no, those numbers are not including heating or transportation.Not sure where you are getting your information, but according to wikipedia Germany is currently operating at 11-12% renewable energy, but only 1/5th of that is wind or solar. Most is biomass.
Don't look at energy consumption. That includes transportation, where renewables are obviously barely represented, and heating (for which all that biomass is burned).
CBD probably meant net generated electricity, where the percentage is about 25% renewables.
Ummm... what?
First sentence of the "Renewable Energy" section of that page;
"The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to over 25 percent in the first half of 2012."
Fabius's guess that you are including non-electrical generation makes sense (i.e. 11% is about right and you only get 'biomass' as a dominant factor when you include wood burning fires), but I really don't know. In any case, even your source confirms my numbers. Which isn't news... the high renewable electricity penetration in Germany has been widely discussed and analyzed for several years now.
Looking into it more, it is a mixture. The graph is counting the heating and transportation sectors, but the rest of the data is electricity only. Annually, it appears that renewables, including biomass, account for 25% of electricity generation. Biomass is roughly 30% of that. Wind and solar are highly seasonal. While they average ~15% of energy generation, they can spike up over 70%. That is exactly why you can't rely on them to form the backbone of your generation. They are great at supplementing, but you need reliable alternatives. Germany seems to be banking on wood as the replacement for traditional fossil fuel plants.
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That's based upon Proxy records - which are horribly inaccurate - and are ball-park figures at best. I'll stick to historical documents when I want hard facts.It's still nowhere near as warm as it was during The Medieval Warm PeriodNo. Parts of the planet were warmer during the 'MWP'. The planet as a whole was not. It isn't even close.
Ummm... historical documents ARE proxy records. Indeed, you cite what those historical documents say about plants growing in different regions. One of those proxy records which you dismiss is plant growth patterns... not from written accounts, but actually looking at the long dead plants from bore holes... which we have for the entire planet. Any MWP historical records from North America? South America? Antarctica? Australia? The oceans?
Your conclusion that the entire planet was warmer based on ignoring 90% of the planet seems suspect.
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No its not. My company, GE, is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling solutions to the problem to energy companies. Its literally the basis for their new software division. There is billions of dollars of profit to be made in the area by optimizing natural gas and coal plant runtime. It is in no way a red herring, but it is becoming a solved problem. In 3-5 years it wont be a significant issue, but right now energy companies are losing money to it and are actively trying to rectify it.
It sounds like you are talking about research into making existing plants operate more like 'fast peaker' natural gas plants... allowing them to capture some of the dispatchable market rather than being shut out. If so, that is indeed a profitable market, but precisely because it is making it possible for those plants to NOT operate in parallel. Rather they will phase up and shut down in response to intermittent renewables.
Parallel generation is a red herring as an argument against intermittent renewables. Yes, it is expensive and inefficient... which is why plants that work that way can't compete and are looking to change. Which is why it isn't an obstacle to renewable power.
You seem to agree that the industry is doing everything it can to get away from wasteful parallel generation, but somehow don't see that this disproves your original claim that, "Above that [level of renewable power] you need to run traditional generators in parellel and end up wasting the energy because of the delay it takes in bringing generators online can make you unable to respond to load changes."
Renewables do NOT "need" parallel generation. There are ways to make dispatchable generation and, since that obviously costs less, it is what everyone is doing.
No its not. My company, GE, is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling solutions to the problem to energy companies. Its literally the basis for their new software division. There is billions of dollars of profit to be made in the area by optimizing natural gas and coal plant runtime. It is in no way a red herring, but it is becoming a solved problem. In 3-5 years it wont be a significant issue, but right now energy companies are losing money to it and are actively trying to rectify it.It sounds like you are talking about research into making existing plants operate more like 'fast peaker' natural gas plants... allowing them to capture some of the dispatchable market rather than being shut out. If so, that is indeed a profitable market, but precisely because it is making it possible for those plants to NOT operate in parallel. Rather they will phase up and shut down in response to intermittent renewables.
Parallel generation is a red herring as an argument against intermittent renewables. Yes, it is expensive and inefficient... which is why plants that work that way can't compete and are looking to change. Which is why it isn't an obstacle to renewable power.
You seem to agree that the industry is doing everything it can to get away from wasteful parallel generation, but somehow don't see that this disproves your original claim that, "Above that [level of renewable power] you need to run traditional generators in parellel and end up wasting the energy because of the delay it takes in bringing generators online can make you unable to respond to load changes."
Renewables do NOT "need" parallel generation. There are ways to make dispatchable generation and, since that obviously costs less, it is what everyone is doing.
No. What I am talking about is making it so you don't have to run natural gas power plants over demand as much to cover the variability in solar and wind. GE made a ton of money optimizing part of the Colorado power grid getting them down to only having 20% redundancy in 2013, ie having traditional generators generate 20% of what solar and wind were producing in case of weather shifts, despite there being no demand for that power. They were operating at 40% redundancy. That was a multi-year initiative in 1 state that was primarily profitable because of the state's initiative to increase its solar install base.
While this is a solvable problem, it isn't a solved problem in most regions, and, unless it is solved for a region, solar and wind investments will take a massive hit in profitability. Its an impediment, but not a show stopper.
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After all - there's no way to prove them without waiting a few thousand years. A lot of it is just popular hypothesis.
(Shakes head sadly). You're right -- there's also absolutely no way to disprove Last Thursdayism. But you eventually arrive at a point where the evidence is pretty good, and there aren't any viable alternatives.
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To expand, when we find leaf wax and even tree stumps under the ice in Antarctica and date them to the Miocene, for example, that's a pretty good indication that Antarctica was warmer then than it is today.
Sure, I suppose it's possible that the dating is wrong because Coyote (or Satan or Loki or Mister Mxyzptlk, or some other trickster super-being) changes all the results of all the different methods by just the right amount so that they seem to converge on the wrong date. Just as I suppose it's also possible that all the evidence of trees was also placed there by mischievous elves or gods or demons, to fool us. But when those are our alternatives, I don't feel like I really need to time travel back to Antarctica in order to have a reasonable idea of what was there.
Only by one eighth. The higher water level puts the bulk of North America under water, which is why you have fossils of sea life in the Grand Canyon.Where was the sea level?Higher than current, but even with no ice caps you don't get Waterworld or anything like that. Remember that liquid water volume is lower than its frozen volume.
The grand canyons been uplifted , it wasn't always that high.
No... nuke plants do not blow up. That is correct. What they do, is make large areas of land uninhabitable for a time scale longer than the existence of any country now on the planet. And we still do not have a long term solution for the waste... which is pretty damm long lived in and of itself.Just wanted to point out that (a) nuclear plants do not "blow up" -- although one did melt down, which is an entirely distinct thing; (b) Chernobyl was the direct result of a known design flaw that was corrected in U.S. reactors and not Soviet ones.
Just wanted to point out that this is pretty inaccurate. Chernobyl is quite habitable for animals now, and could easily be safe for human habitation in the near future. This has happened entirely within my lifespan, which I must admit is shorter than a very large number of countries.
Didn't you know Paris, London and most of Europe was deep underwater during the medieval period? Fun fact! It was damn inconvenient for the people who lived there, but hey, what could you do? There were a few attempts to evolve gills, but nothing much came of it. There is some discussion on whether the Piltdown man was an example of this.
Good news:
Climate change may solve middle east conflict.
In the peace corps in mauritania, someone said that the roaving sand dunes were gods way of telling people not to live there....
Of course, thats going to make some other geographical region a band of quasi inhabitable wasteland, so its not so much solving the problem as moving it.
Good news:
Climate change may solve middle east conflict.In the peace corps in mauritania, someone said that the roaving sand dunes were gods way of telling people not to live there....
Of course, thats going to make some other geographical region a band of quasi inhabitable wasteland, so its not so much solving the problem as moving it.
Not to mention taking nations that can't get along and making them refugees that can't get along. The world isn't even capable of dealing with the Syrian exodus, so if the entire region needed to find new digs, it would be an unmitigated disaster.
To say nothing of the fundamentalists who would insist that everyone needs to stay there... For prophecy.
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Indeed, given that the Syrian civil war and exodus were kicked off by a monstrous drought, I'd say that is showing us exactly what to expect going forward. You'll see conflict both in the areas the refugees are fleeing from and those they are fleeing too... and some of the countries on both sides of that equation are going to have nuclear weapons.
That is where global warming gets really dangerous.
You think humans make bad decisions (like, not doing anything to stop climate change) when they're relatively safe and secure... just wait until they're starving and scared.
The grand canyons been uplifted , it wasn't always that high.Only by one eighth. The higher water level puts the bulk of North America under water, which is why you have fossils of sea life in the Grand Canyon.Where was the sea level?Higher than current, but even with no ice caps you don't get Waterworld or anything like that. Remember that liquid water volume is lower than its frozen volume.The uplift occured after that period when the center of the continent was one giant sea. Keep in mind that the plateau is about a mile higher than average.
Sea levels overall were about 600 feet higher than today. That's a profound influence on the land map. Antarctica would have been two pieces of land separated by a lot of water.
I think you have your timing off here. While a good swath of Europe and western Asia were covered by water, North America's interior was land for most of the Cenozoic. In fact the coastlines were pretty much set by the Eocene, which is why we find whale fossils not to far from current coastlines
Just want to chime in - even if the globe is warming - it probably doesn't really matter very much.
I know virtually nothing about the science aspect, and I won't try to weigh in there. (I'm dubious that the scientists on either side know as much as they generally claim.) However - I am a student of history.
It's still nowhere near as warm as it was during The Medieval Warm Period - we know that based upon merchant records of what crops were grown where. For example: There are records of calls for the French gov. to put tariffs on English wine, which was apparently superior to the French wine of the time. (You can't grow decent grapes in England now... because it's too cold.)
The world didn't blow up. In fact - the world's population did quite well.
It's not the overall warmth that does most of the damage, it's the rapidity of the shift and the difficulty adapting fast enough. The current shift is far more rapid than the shift into the Medieval Warm Period. Also, as a student of history, you should be aware that climatic change has knocked out many a civilization in the past.
So it begins... first investigation of Exxon-Mobil for climate change fraud launched
WooooOOOOOooo
15 seconds until the fed takes over and buries it
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Try "ExxonMobil bad, Greenpeace bad."
Fair enough, but there's quite a bit of false equivalence built into that.
It's like saying Galactic Empire bad, people who tear the little tags off of pillows also bad!